682 results found.
... Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Curious Effects Department The spinning-egg water-sprinkler. It is generally known that you can separate fresh eggs from hard-boiled eggs by spinning them like a top. If they are hard-boiled they will spin on one of the ends. The fluid contents of fresh eggs, however, will slosh around and prevent top action. O.K .! this is not very curious, so we'll place a hard-boiled egg in a flat pan containing a thin layer of water and give it a spin. Not only does the egg spin on end but a layer of water creeps up the side of the egg. When the water is about half way up the side of the egg it breaks up into droplets and sprays out horizontally like a rotating lawn sprinkler. No mysterious forces are involved, nor are there spooky quantum mechanics effects. The major forces operating are gravity, centrifugal force, and adhesion between the egg surface and the water. As the film of water creeps up the egg, the centrifugal force increases and overcomes the force of adhesion. Then, water droplets spray outward. (Gutierrez, Gustavo, et al; "Fluid Flow up the Wall of a Spinning Egg," American Journal of Physics, 66:442, 1998.) Creating fluid corners in kitchen sinks. When a smooth column of water from your kitchen faucet hits the sink, it flows out radially. At a calculable radius, its height suddenly rises. This smooth, circular ridge is called a "hydraulic jump. ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 120: Nov-Dec 1998 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Dog Doctors Credentials must be established here. The writer of the two articles digested below is an M.D . and a graduate of the Harvard Medical School. This is not a hoax! Melanoma sniffing. In 1989, the Lancet , a respected British medical journal, published an article relating how a female dog, half border collie, half doberman, sniffed out a spot of melanoma on a woman. In fact, the dog ignored all of the other moles on the woman and even tried to bite off the melanoma. Melanoma is the most dreaded form of skin cancer, so this bizarre report stimulated A. Cognetta, an American dermotologist, to try an experiment. First, another dog, named George, was trained to find tubes containing melanoma samples, which he did correctly 99% of the time. Next, a human with active melanoma was enlisted. Several bandages were placed on the subject's body including one over the melanoma site. Once again, George was almost 100% accurate in his diagnosis. Subsequently, George successfully identified malignancies on other patients. (Walker, Kenneth; "George the Dog Helps Take a Bite out of Skin Cancer," Chicago Sun-Times , September 6, 1998. Cr. J. Cieciel.) Seizure sniffing. An English woman subject to epileptic seizures never goes anywhere without her dog Rupert. Rupert has a nose for the odor that precedes epileptic seizures ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 115: Jan-Feb 1998 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Frog Fall June 16, 1937. Frackville, Pennsylvania. "Astonished householders of this little mining town, ten miles north of Pottsville, went out with brooms and swept bullfrogs off their open porches after a thunderstorm today. "The tiny frogs sounded like the thudding of hailstones as they dropped by hundreds on tin roofs. "Miniature "twisters" accompanying the rain had lifted the frogs several yards into the air, it was suggested, and dropped them over Frackville." (Anonymous; "Bullfrogs by the Hundred Fall in Pennsylvania Rain," New York Times, June 17, 1937. Cr. M. Piechota. Comment. The "whirlwind theory" is always trotted out to account for fish, frog, and toad falls. It is not easy to find hundreds of tiny frogs in a marsh and then vacuum them up without also levitating considerable plant debris and other marsh dwellers. From Science Frontiers #115, JAN-FEB 1998 . 1998-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 113: Sep-Oct 1997 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Ball of Light Clocked At 1,800 Miles/second!August 21, 1996. Sarpy County, NE. 1,800 miles/second! That's 6,480,000 miles/hour! This speedy phenomenon was captured on video tape by D. Morss and P. McCrone. These researchers were monitoring the top of a thunderstorm with low-light, high-speed video equipment, when the ball of light "popped out" of the top of a thundercloud and flashed across their instrument's field of view in 1/10 of a second. Nevertheless, it was caught on six video frames. Morss commented as follows: "It's something that you're going to have to scratch your head and think, 'What kind of phenomenon could form this kind of light?' .. .. . "It's got to be some kind of trapped charge that popped out of the top of a thunderstorm." (Anderson, Julie; "Ball of Light Leaves Scientists in the Dark," Omaha Morning Herald , December 18, 1996. Cr. L. Farish.) Comment. Perhaps 1,800 miles per second should really be 1,800 miles per hour. This velocity would be comparable with that of another very speedy "ball of light." May 25, 1997. Near Loco, Oklahoma. In what might be called a " ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 114: Nov-Dec 1997 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Quantum mechanics is definitely spooky "I cannot seriously believe in [the quantum theory] because it cannot be reconciled with the idea that physics should represent a reality in time and space, free from spooky actions at a distance." (Ref. 1) So Einstein wrote Max Born in March 1947. Well, even Einstein could have been wrong! "It's getting even spookier out there. Particles can be strangely connected over at least ten kilometres, according to results from physicists in Geneva. Using pairs of "entangled" photons, Nicolas Gisin and his colleagues from the University of Geneva have shown that the measurement of one particle will instantaneously determine the state of the other." (Ref. 2) This particular spooky aspect of quantum mechanics was demonstrated 15 years ago over a distance of just a few meters. Many physicists had expected (probably "hoped") that this "mysterious link" between separated particles would weaken with distance. But this quantum-mechanics effect does not conform to "common-sense" expectations! Now it seems that one particle of an "entangled pair" knows instantaneously what its mate is doing, possibly even if it is located on the other side of the universe. More quantum-mechanics spookiness is seen in "tunneling" phenomena, such as that mentioned in AR#3 , where a Mozart symphony zipped through a barrier at 4.7 times the speed of ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 121: Jan-Feb 1999 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Problems Of Aboriginal Art In Australia In SF#117, we reproduced some Australian rock art featuring sylph-like, flowing human figures quite unlike today's aborigines. In our more recent library searches, we have come across an old article that provides additional examples of the socalled Bradshaw paintings -- more of those graceful human forms with long, billowing tresses. Very out-ofplace in today's Outback. The same article adds an even more puzzling human representation to the burgeoning file of mysterious Australian art. It is a carving found in a cave of northwestern Australia. Here is the text accompanying the sketch. "Another cave introduced a fresh problem. Fronting it, high up on the vertical face of a cliff, and unreachable without mechanical aid, had been carved out of the solid stone a human head in profile, which I show. It was 2 feet long and 16 inches across, and 1 -inch thick; and I leave my hearers to say whether it is not a striking and distinguished face. It is absolutely different from the heads of modern Aborigines. The worn edges of the cameo, where it joined the rock-surface, seemed to mark a long interval since it was carved; the difficulty of carving it where it stood must have been immense -- unless, indeed, the rock face had been near the ground at the time, and the ground had worn away since - ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 116: Mar-Apr 1998 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects High-Flying Catfish Anomalies crop up in out-of-the-way places and unusual publications. A radio amateur (Dave, K1WHS) noticed that his 432-MHz beam was higher tha normal. Checking his tall antenna, he saw something dangling from the horizontal elements. It turned out to be a good-sized, desiccated catfish. Dave's antenna is 60 feet high and miles from any lake or stream. (Anonymous; QST , p. 21, February 1998. Cr. L.M . Nash) From Science Frontiers #116, MAR-APR 1998 . 1998-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 113: Sep-Oct 1997 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Earth's Shifting Crust Our title is identical to that of a book published by C.P . Hapgood in 1958. He also wrote The Path of the Pole (1970). Several other authors have also proposed that sudden slippages of the earth's crust caused wild climate fluctuations in the past with devastating biological consequences -- in particular, all those quickfrozen mammoths in Siberia. These poleshift scenarios coming from thinkers swimming far out of the scientific mainstream have been studiously ignored in a "new" and well-publicized pole-shift theory recently appearing in Science. The "new" theory relates to an old (534-millionyears-ago) crustal slippage, whereas Hapgood was talking about a cataclysm within the last 10,000 years or so. Nevertheless, it would have been nice to see Hapgood's earlier work acknowledged. Four features of this "new" proposal make it more palatable than Hapgood's to today's geologists and geophysicists: Two of the "new" authors, J. Kirschvink and D.A . Evans, are at the prestigious California Institute of Technology, while Hapgood was a PhD-less history professor at Keene State College. Status is important when theorizing. Kirschvink et al propose a scientifically acceptable mechanism for the onset of rapid crustal slippage. They visualize a huge chunk of the seafloor suddenly foundering and thereby changing the planet's mass distribution. This imbalance caused ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 107: Sep-Oct 1996 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Tear Of The Gods?" This huge teardrop of ice, weighing four pounds, fell out of the sky and landed on a grass verge near stunned commuters at a bus stop in Ecclesfield, near Sheffield. Firemen took it back to Tankersley fire station and preserved it in a freezer. Later, someone took it out and dropped it." (Anonymous; "Tears of the Gods," Fortean Times, p. 9, no, 88, August 1996. Source cited: Sheffield Star, March 18, 1996.) Comment. Based on its weight, this "drop" of ice is about 5 inches across. One wonders where in the sky such a large drop of water could form and then freeze solid. The hackneyed explanation that ice falls come from leaky aircraft lavatories seems unlikely here! Reference. Ice falls or "hydrometeors" are described in GWF1 in the catalog: Tornados, Dark Days. This book is listed here . From Science Frontiers #107, SEP-OCT 1996 . 1996-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Bermuda Triangle. Crew from the HMS London , who boarded the 50ft German ketch Ruth in the mid-Atlantic last week were baffled to find clothes and personal belongings lying around, and even an open book on a bunk." The HMS London crew cleaned up the vessel and made minor repairs, but it was otherwise shipshape. They learned that the boat belonged to a German couple hoping to sail around the world. Evidence indicated that the yacht had been adrift for all of 10 months. Repairs made, the Royal Navy crew headed for Puerto Rico, but the Bermuda Triangle did not release its grip. The new crew encountered huge storms, their navigation equipment failed, as did the engine. Using sails, the crew persevered. Now the final twist of the tale. "Once out of the Bermuda Triangle, the equipment started working again, and the crew arrived safely in Puerto Rico to rejoin HMS London on July 12." (Foreign staff; "Abandoned Yacht Found Adrift in Bermuda Triangle," London Times, July 16, 1997. Cr. A.C .A . Silk.) Comment. Could the missing German couple now be living in Argentina under new names? If we find out more or learn that the story is a hoax, we'll let you know. From Science Frontiers #114, NOV-DEC 1997 . 1997-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 119: Sep-Oct 1998 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Cassowary, 1; Automobile, 0 Many birds are done in by fast-moving cars. The usual avian mode of retaliation involves defecation, especially on freshly washed and polished automobiles. On occasion, though, birds will use brute force. For example, keas (New Zealand parrots) consider it their duty to pry out the rubber gaskets around automobile windshields with their powerful bills. A cassowary can be even more forceful. Recently, a motorist near Cairns, Australia, was forced to stop by a sixfoot cassowary standing in the middle of the road. He edged the car forward slowly, but the huge bird stood its ground. Then, he blew his horn. Bad move! The cassowary objected by kicking the auto, pushing the radiator into the fan, which cut a hole in it. (Anonymous; "Feedback," New Scientist, p. 104, June 13, 1998.) Comment. The flightless cassowaries are armed with sharp toenails, with which they disembowel New Guinea natives who displease them. Besides disposing of obstreperous automobiles, cassowaries are said to catch fish by wading into streams, spreading out their wings, waiting, and then closing them on sheltering fish. (From: Biological Anomalies: Birds). From Science Frontiers #119, SEP-OCT 1998 . 1998-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 116: Mar-Apr 1998 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects More On The Mekong Mystery Those basketball-sized lights erupting from the Mekong River, Thailand, (SF#114) turn out to be a well-known annual event. Their official name is: the Nekha Lights. They have even been filmed and shown on Thai TV. These weird luminous displays occur during the October full moon and last only about 30 minutes. The lights rise out of the river and nearby rice paddies, but only along a small stretch of the river straddling the Thailand-Laos border. (Anonymous; "Mekong Mystery," New Scientist, p. 109, December 20/27, 1997.) Comment. Some marine species, such as the paolo worms, rise to the surface annually to spawn under a full moon. Could the Mekong Lights have a biological origin? From Science Frontiers #116, MAR-APR 1998 . 1998-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... or 7:00 AM), I was awoken by what I thought were loud explosions of thunder. It was a very loud, abrupt sound, sort of like close-by thunderclaps except that they seemed somewhat distant and yet had no reverberations or rumblings. I went to the window which faced a large building across the way...The early morning appeared warm, humid, and overcast. The explosive "thunderclaps" happened again, a whole series of them, and they seemed to originate up in the air and to my right, but I could detect no flashes of light, and the blasts seemed to come at random points in the sky (which was not very visible to me because of the big building looming across the lawn). I couldn't figure out where the storm cloud was that was producing these blasts, since everything was uniformly overcast, and there was no darkness moving in or evident in my field of view. From the sound of the blasts, which were very impressive, powerful noises, I pictured in my mind's eye that huge cloud-to-ground bolts of lightning must be erupting somewhere aloft and to the right and out of sight of my position at the window. But they seemed too scattered about, and then one boomed to the rear of my position, and that was soon followed by a blast slightly to the left of that one and way to the left of all the previous ones. Yet, there was no flash of lightning and no dark mass of cloud moving from right to left. ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 114: Nov-Dec 1997 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Mekong Mystery The following question was posed in the September 6 issue of New Scientist. "My wife and I saw a puzzling sight in October 1994, in the Mekong River near Nongkhai, Thailand, during a full moon, in the evening. Lights appeared under the water for a few hundred metres along the Mekong River. They rose from the bottom of the river and floated to the surface, then shot like missiles into the sky and out of sight. They were the size of beach balls, and many flew out of the water every few minutes, surfacing about 10 metres apart. I am told that this happens every year at the same time. Locals say it is caused by a serpent releasing her eggs. Does anyone know of this phenomenon?" A. Pentecost answered. He noted first the similarity of the Mekong phenomenon to the will-o '- the-wisp or ignis fatuus. The usual explanation of ignis fatuus blames the spontaneous combustion of marsh gas. However, the Mekong lights are initially seen under the water where there would not be enough oxygen to support combustion. Pentecost suggested instead phosphorescent bacteria or the "cold flame" of phosphorus vapor which might form through diphosphane decomposition. (Pentecost, Allan, et al; "Mekong Mystery," New Scientist, p. 96, September 6, 1997.) References. The Mekong phenomenon may be allied with the many examples of luminous ...
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... trombone" was thought to be a gas-filled subterranean cavity capped at the top by rock, with a pool of magma at the bottom. Volcanic vibrations resonated in this chamber. As the magma pool rose and fell, the fundamental tone changed. More recently, a network of seismic stations in French Polynesia has picked up more mysterious seismic signals. These differ from those in Java in that each fundamental tone is "pure"; that is, there are no harmonics. Dubbed "T -waves," the sounds originated from an active volcanic ridge in the South Pacific. Suspicion fell on one flat-topped volcano that rose to within 130 meters of the ocean surface. But, how could this peak generate such a pure tone? The theory is that the active volcano spews out a column of steam bubbles bounded at the bottom by the flat volcano and by the ocean at the top. Computer simulations proved that sound could resonate in a column of bubbles just as it does in an organ pipe. Since the height of the column remains fixed, so does the fundamental tone. Certainly harmonics are generated, too, but the bubbles damp out the higher frequencies, leaving a pure tone. (Schneider, David: "A Blue Note," Sci entific American , 277:18, August 1997.) Comments. The resonating-bubble-cloud theory was proposed in a 1996 issue of the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America. From Science Frontiers #115, JAN-FEB 1998 . 1998-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 115: Jan-Feb 1998 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Berkeley Walls Extended For almost two decades, R. Swanson has been searching out the enigmatic stone walls that festoon the Berkeley Hills and beyond, far, it now seems. We first mentioned these walls and provided a photograph back in 1985. (SF#39) Since then, Swanson's labors have received a modicum of public notoriety but hardly a flicker of academic interest. One reason for professional disinterest seems to be that grant money for exploring old walls is nonexistent! To bring new readers of SF up to speed on these perplexing California walls, we quote two paragraphs from a recent article by Swanson. "On the crest of the Berkeley hills there is a long line of large rocks, some are three feet in length, they may weigh a half ton. A century ago they ran for miles on these dry, wind-swept crests then down in a line to what is now the botanical gardens." .. .. . "In the past twelve years, I have visited over forty miles of these stone structures. To call them walls is something of a misnomer. Some do go in a straight line, others twist like a demented snake up a steep hillside, others come in a spiral two hundred feet wide and circle into a boulder with a six-inch knob carved on the top of it. Some are massive, over six feet tall and run for miles." ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 119: Sep-Oct 1998 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Murder In The Nest In a recent issue of BioScience, R.B . Payne authored an excellent review of brood parasitism in birds. Brood parasites lay their eggs in the nests of other species, which then incubate the eggs and raise the alien chicks. The parent parasites are thus free to forage, hang out, and parasitize more nests. Brood parasitism is such a successful and easy way of life that 136 species of cuckoos, 5 species of cowbirds, 20 finches, and South America's Blackheaded Duck have adopted it. Brood parasitism fascinates ornithologists because it involves war between the parasites and their hosts. Since host species may eject parasite eggs or fail to nurture parasite chicks, brood parasites have evolved mimicry as a powerful weapon in these battles. Mimicked are host eggs, host nestlings, and host vocalizations. But the most insidious weapons of all involve the outright murder of host chicks. To this end, parasite chicks have evolved some special weapons and behaviors. Some cuckoo chicks evict host eggs or chicks by squirming under them and positioning them in a specially configured hollow on their backs. Then, pushing upward and outward to the rim of the nest, they dump their cargo over the edge. Other brood parasites are more direct and bloodthirsty. "Nestling African honeyguides have bill hooks to stab and kill their nestmates and the brood parasitic American striped cuckoos have independently evolved hooks and pincers to kill." (Payne ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 108: Nov-Dec 1996 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Hairy Rarity Ordinarily, we avoid two-headed snakes, six-legged calves, and the like. Sometimes biological machinery sputters a bit and freaks (terata) result, just as Detroit assembly lines turn out lemons once in a while. Occasionally, though, we come across a defect so rare and curious that we must pass it along. So, here is the Summary of a serious scientific paper, along with a sketch, that satisfies our Fortean urge. "A Burmese family with congenital hypertrichosis lanuginosa [excessive hairiness] had an eventful history in the nineteenth century. The earlier members of this family were employed at the court of Ava, but the later ones spent their lives in show business, being widely exhibited for money in the 1800s. Their extraordinary hairiness attracted much curiosity, and they were photographed several times. The hairy Burmese are the only example of a fourgeneration pedigree of congenital hypertrichosis lanuginosa, which is consistent with an autosomal dominant mode of inheritance. There is good evidence that, when members of this family were hairy, their dentition was also deficient." (Bondeson, J., and Miles, A.E .W .; "The Hairy Family of Burma: A Four Generation Pedigree of Congenital Hypertrichosis Lanuginosa," Royal Society of Medicine, Journal, 89:403, 1996. Cr. A.C .A . Silk) Reference. Excessively hairy people are cataloged at BHA26 ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 109: Jan-Feb 1997 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects And They Went Forth And Multiplied Archeologists excavating the ancient city of Hazor, in Israel, have uncovered a handy-size chip made from red clay and engraved with symbols. This 3,000-yearold artifact has turned out to be a multiplication table! (Anonymous; "And in Israel," USA Today , July 30, 1996. Cr. COUD-I ) COUD-I = Collectors of Unusual Data-International. From Science Frontiers #109, JAN-FEB 1997 . 1997-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... 1997 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Too Much Order In The Early Cosmos Astronomers are becoming accustomed to the idea that many nearby galaxies are concentrated in spherical shells separated from one another by about 400 million light years. This onion-skin geometry is inferred from the fact that galactic red shifts cluster around specific values; that is, they are quantized. Since red shifts are held to be proportional to distance in the expanding universe paradigm: Voila! We have shells! This evidence of nearby cosmic order does not seriously disturb cosmologists, because in the nearby galaxies we are seeing that portion of the universe that is billions of years old. In other words, nearby there has been enough time for some degree of order to have evolved out of the primordial chaos of the Big Bang. Now though, "deep" surveys of galaxies, looking much farther back in time, still show clustered red shifts -- not the expected increasing chaos required by theory. Although the surveys are incomplete, astronomers are discomfited by this early lumpiness. Their theories say that there was not enough time for galaxies to organize themselves into sheets, shells, and skeins. If further "deep" probings of the cosmos confirm this redshift clustering, we may need a new evolutionary scenario. Good bye Big Bang and expanding universe! (Vogel, Gretchen; "Goodness, Gracious, Great Walls Afar," Science, 274:343, 1996. Vergano, D.; "New Evidence of Cosmic Architecture," Science News, 150: ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 120: Nov-Dec 1998 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Bouncing Ball Lightning Autumn 1940, Berwyn Mountains, North Wales. The percipient in this unusual ball lightning sighting was a Mr. H, who was schoolmaster at Sandyhurst College. "While out walking he was caught in a violent thunderstorm on the side of a hill with a scooped valley below. Ahead of him perhaps 300 feet distant, a bolt of lightning struck a tree with a sharp explosion of noise. Almost immediately a sphere six inches in diameter appeared from the direction of the strike and began to bounce across the ground towards him like a rubber ball. Climbing the hill under its own energy, the object rolled in a parabolic path and hit the ground every ten or twenty feet, climbing up to about three feet in height with each 'rebound'. Every time it hit the ground there was no sound, but a puff of greyish smoke or vapor was emitted. The object got to within about 50 feet of Mr. H before it suddenly vanished. This allowed him to have a good look at it at close proximity. He says that it was completely round and was a smokey-grey colour." (Anonymous; "Ball Lightning in Lancashire and North Wales," Journal of Meteorology, U.K ., 23:139, 1998.) From Science Frontiers #120, NOV-DEC 1998 . 1998-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 121: Jan-Feb 1999 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology Problems of aboriginal art in australia A CONTINENT LOST IN THE PACIFIC OCEAN Astronomy Oklo: an unappreciated cosmic phenomenon Is life a transitor phenomenon? Biology Acupuncture 5,200 ears ago? Imprison willy! Is intelligence a deadly pathogen? How homeopath might work October 5, 1998: dark day for homing pigeons Starlings fall out of the sky Geology An arkansas tsunami deposit? Fused ancient garbage dumps Geophysics Tunguska afterglow Lake champlain's two seiches B-24 SIGHTS "CIRCLES OF LIGHT" Psychology Are pets psychic? ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 121: Jan-Feb 1999 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Acupuncture 5,200 Years Ago?The Tyrolean Iceman died in the Alps about 5,200 years ago, but his mummified body is exceptionally well-preserved -- so well-preserved that 15 groups of tattoo marks on his body stand out vividly. These punctures do not seem to be ornamental, like those on a sailor's biceps, nor are they on parts of the body usually displayed. What is most interesting are their locations; some groups are placed at traditional Chinese acupuncture points. Bolstering this suspicion is the determination from computer tomography (noninvasive imaging) that the Iceman suffered from arthrosis of the lumbar spine. The Iceman's body is punctured at the points usually used by acupuncturists to treat this condition! "These findings raise the possibility that the practice of therapeutically intended acupuncture originated long before the medical tradition of ancient China (approximately 1000 B.C .) and that its geographical origins were Eurasian rather than East-Asian, consistent with far-reaching intercultural contacts of prehistoric mankind." (Dorfer, Leopold, et al; "5200-Year-Old Acupuncture in Central Europe?" Science, 282:242, 1998.) From Science Frontiers #121, JAN-FEB 1999 . 1999-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 109: Jan-Feb 1997 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Wind-driven Ice Sheets In Death Valley Scientists generally scoff at Forteana as beneath their dignity to investigate. But the mysterious moving rocks on Racetrack Playa in Death Valley have lured them out of their ivied halls. We quote from the abstract of a report seen in the mainstream journal Geology . "Sharply angular boulders as large as 320 kg [700 pounds] sit on the Racetrack Playa, Death Valley, California; trails leading to them indicate that the rocks have moved large distances. The process has never been witnessed. Although high winds and a wetted surface seem necessary, controversy persists about the need for other conditions, especially ice sheets. On the basis of experiments with a wetted Racetrack surface (soft mud about 3 cm deep), we find the effective coefficient of friction to be surprisingly high, about 0.8 . Movement by wind alone of moderate-sized (20 kg) rocks with cubic shape requires sustained winds close to the ground of about 80 m/s (about 180 mph). Larger flat-lying rocks require much higher winds." The authors of this paper, J.B . Reid, Jr., et al, precisely mapped a large number of the enigmatic tracks. Their maps revealed many "mated pairs" of rocks, whose curving tracks matched near their origins to within a few centimeters, even though the tracks were separated by up to 830 meters (over 0. ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 110: Mar-Apr 1997 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Alphamagic Squares Not everything in SF is profound or anomalous, although we hope most of the items are at least interesting. Magic squares, we think, are endlessly fascinating. They exist in forms that verge on the unbelievable. You can even construct large magic squares from smaller magic squares. Nevertheless, the fact that alphamagic squares exist in large numbers is unexpected. Alphamagic squares come in pairs. The first member of the pair consists of a magic square in which the numbers are spelled out letterwise, as in this example: five twenty-two eighteen twenty-eight fifteen two twelve eight twenty-five The numbers add up to 45 in all rows, columns, and diagonals. The square is "magic" in words. The second member of the pair is formed by counting the number of letters in each word of the first square, thus: 4 9 8 11 7 3 6 5 10 This square is also magic, adding up to 21 in all directions! Just a fluke, you say? Not so. You can even construct alphamagic squares in different languages. In his column in Scientific American, I. Stewart provides examples in French, German, Welsh, and even Swahili! In German, there are no less than 221 alphamagic squares using numbers under 100. (Stewart, Ian; "Alphamagic Squares," Scientific American, 276:106, January 1997.) Comment. The "deep ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 110: Mar-Apr 1997 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Nannobacteria: life on a different scale Who ever heard of nannobacteria until those tiny, worm-like objects were photographed inside that putative Martian meteorite ALH 84001? It turns out that these very tiny cells (only 0.1 - 0.4 micrometers in diameter) are everywhere on earth, but it seems that virtually no one knows about them. The furor over ALH 84001 has underscored professional and public ignorance of nannobacteria. Some scientists have asserted that bacteria could never be as small as those "objects" seen in the greatly magnified photos of ALH 84001. This claim led R.L . Folk to fire off a letter to Science that began with these two sentences: "Enough! As one of the discoverers of mineralized nannobacteria on Earth*, I must come to their defense. They are so abundant in samples I have studied that I believe they may make up most of the Earth's biomass." Folk reports that nannobacteria are found just about everywhere: hot-spring waters, decaying leaves, even blood. Nannobacteria are key players in the earth's surface chemistry, precipitating a host of minerals and acting symbiotically to precipitate organic hard parts. (Folk, Robert; "In Defense of Nannobacteria," Science, 274:1288, 1996.) Comment. Ignorance of nannobacteria is not surprising. One needs a scanning electron microscope to see them. * See: Folk, R.L ...
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... that is performed when eukaryote (nucleuscontaining) cells divide. Because chromosomes are composed of genes and their DNA -- the information carriers of inheritance -- it reasonable to suppose that they are the "dance-masters." This expectation is enhanced if one holds that the genes are "selfish;" that is, they have their own evolutionary agendas, and all life forms exist only to execute their "will." But cell division would not occur at all without the action of the cell's bipolar spindle. This spindle is composed of microtubules -- rods of the protein "tubulin." Somehow , when cells are about to divide, they synthesize these microtubules, which then seem to organize themselves into orderly arrays (the bipolar spindles). Then, the microtubules sort out and separate the two sets of chromosomes required for the two new cells. So, far, our description conforms to what biologists have known and accepted for decades; but there is something more mysterious going on. In 1996, researchers discovered that they can actually substitute DNAcovered beads for the chromosomes, and the microtubules will still go through the motions of sorting and separating the chromosome-less strands. Actually, the microtubules will perform their act even without the DNA-covered beads. In a sense, the bipolar spindle is a puppetmaster, and the microtubules are the strings. The puppet show can go on without the puppets (chromosomes). (Hyams, Jeremy; "Look Ma, No Chromosomes," Nature, 382:397, 1996. Also: Heald, Rebecca, ...
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... Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Levitation And Levity!New Scientist's "Feedback" page, our favorite source for remarkable insights into cosmic phenomena, noted recently that the magazine Omni had announced the winner of its "Theories" contest. The winning entry was revolutionary, to say the least. In the words of the inventor: "When a cat is dropped, it always lands on its feet, and when toast is dropped, it always lands with the buttered side facing down. I propose to strap buttered toast to the back of a cat; the two will hover, spinning inches above the ground." There is a deep profundity in this arrangement. S. Voss recognized immediately that a perpetual motion machine had been proposed. He set out to find a flaw. Somehow, energy was being supplied to keep the cat-toast armature turning. Voss observed that any practical cat-toast motor would have to be suspended over a very expensive carpet, for the simple reason that the probability of the toast landing buttered-side down is well known to be proportional to the cost of the carpet. (Linoleum is very poor in this application.) Furthermore. to maintain the machine's efficiency, the rug would have to be frequently cleaned of falling cat hairs. Carpet cleaning is energy-intensive, and it is here that energy must be supplied, thereby nullifying the perpetual-motion claim! (Anonymous; New Scientist "Feedback" columns for October 19 and November 16, 1996) From Science Frontiers #111 ...
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... Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects We've Known It All Along!An archeologist really risks his or her reputation if he or she suggests that the Americas were peopled before 12,000 years ago. At least that's the way it was until early 1997, when a select "jury" of a dozen skeptical archeologists visited the Monte Verde site in southern Chile. There, T. Dillehay, made his case for a culture that preceded North America's Clovis culture by at least 1,000 years. Monte Verde artifacts go back at least to 12,500 years before the present. The Monte Verde tour, backed by two very detailed reports, convinced some of the most obstinate skeptics. The "jury" was "in," and the Clovis culture was "out," at least as being the first New World culture. Naturally, some still-skeptical archeologists bristled at the suggestion that a "jury" could decide for them. [But isn't that the way science always works?] Regardless, the once formidable 12,000year barrier now seems to have been officially breached. The Monte Verde dates imply either: The Bering land bridge, thousands of miles to the north, was crossed a few millennia before 12,500 BP, or The Monte Verde people arrived by some other route, perhaps by ship! (Wilford, John Noble; "Human Presence in Americas Is Pushed Back a Millennium," New York Times, February 11, 1997. Cr. M. Colpitts. Also: Meltzer, David J.; ...
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... unrecorded. These mammals are effectively toothless for predatory purposes. In fact, some marine biologists speculate that they secure their slippery prey by suddenly vacuuming them up by actuating a pumplike tongue. (AR#2 ) But how do the beaked whales find their prey in the first place? With their sonar, of course. But these superbly streamlined animals lack the huge external ears of the sonar-using bats. How do they detect the weak echoes bouncing off fleeing fish? P. Zioupos and J. Currey, at the University of York, have drawn attention to the rostrum bone that forms the beaklike upper jaw of Blaineville's beaked whale. At 2.7 grams/cubic centimeter, this bone is 50% denser than the average mammalian bone. "The bone also turned out to have unique chemical properties. It contains 35 per cent calcium by weight -- 13 per cent more than the highest value known previously. Using microscopes, the team showed that the bone is riddled with tiny tunnels. containing highly concentrated minerals." The channelled nature of this bone make it very brittle, making it unlikely that it is used as a ram in mating bouts. Zioupos and Currey propose that this uniquely structured bone is really an acoustical pipe for the beaked whales' sonar signals. (Barnett, Adrian; "Do Whales Talk through Brittle Beaks?" New Scientist, p. 20, May 10, 1997.) Comment. Acoustical pipes were also invented by close relatives of the beaked whales, the dolphins. With the dolphins, it is the lower jaw ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 107: Sep-Oct 1996 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Organ Music Your doctor is understandably concerned if he finds your heartbeat is irregular. But it turns out that the healthy heart does not beat steadily and precisely like a metronome. In fact, the intervals between normal heartbeats vary in a curious fashion: in a simple, direct way, they can be converted to musical notes. When these notes (derived from heartbeat intervals) are heard, the sound is pleasant and intriguing to the ear -- almost music -- and certainly far from being random noise. In fact, a new CD entitled: Heartsongs: Musical Mappings of the Heartbeat , by Z. Davis, records the "music" derived from the digital tape recordings of the heartbeats of 15 people. Recording venue: Harvard Medical School's Beth Israel Hospital! This whole business raises some "interesting" speculations for R.M . May. "We could equally have ended up with boring sameness, or even dissonant jangle. The authors speculate that musical composition may involve, to some degree, 'the recreation by the mind of the body's own naturally complex rhythms and frequencies. Perhaps what the ear and the brain perceive as pleasing or interesting are variations in pitch that resonate with or replicate the body's own complex (fractal) variability and scaling.'" (May, Robert M.; "Now That's What You Call Chamber Music," Nature, 381:659 ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 113: Sep-Oct 1997 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Green Thunderstorms Anecdotes abound that exceptionally severe thunderstorms may appear to emit an eerie, sickeningly yellow-green light. Skeptics scoff at this notion. The excited observers were deluded, or they made it all up. This is, of course, the same knee-jerk response greeting UFO reports and accounts of many other anomalies. Thunderstorms, however, do have an objective existence. And it turns out that a few storm-watching meteorologists have also seen greenish thunderstorms. Such professional testimony is usually dismissed as due to the reflection of greenish ground vegetation by the storm clouds or, perhaps, the effects of sheets of hail preceding the storms. In 1995, F.W . Gallagher et al decided to settle the matter. They chased likely looking thunderstorms armed with a spectrophotometer. Many storms later, they proved, first of all, that some thunderstorms are definitely green. In fact, some gradually change from blue to green in the space of half an hour. Their ground observations, plus more spectrophotometer data taken from aircraft, refute the theory that the green color is from reflected vegetation. Hail may contribute to the green color but is not required. In sum, green thunderstorms really do exist, but no one yet knows where all the green comes from. (Gallagher, Frank W., III, et al; "Green Thunderstorms Observed," Amer ican Meteorological Society, Bulletin, 77:2889, 1996 ...
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... one part of the universe can create order elsewhere. For example, if you add tiny plastic spheres of two sizes to salty water, you will not get a uniform mixture. Instead the larger spheres will pack together into tightly ordered crystaline shapes (representing more order) while the smaller spheres become more disordered. It is like watching cream unstir itself from coffee. It smacks of magic, but it is all within the laws of thermodynamics. This strange "force" exerted by entropy may explain some puzzling biological phenomena, such as the expulsion of nuclei from mammalian red blood cells before they enter the bloodstream as sacks of hemoglobin. The idea being that the increasing entropy of the proliferating hemoglobin molecules (analogous to the smaller spheres) is maximized when the nuclei (large spheres) are squeezed out of the cells altogether. (Kestenbaum, David; "Gentle Force of Entropy Bridges Disciplines," Science, 279:1849, 1998.) Comments. The red-blood-cell example presented in the article is on shaky ground, because while mammalian red blood cells do lack nuclei those of birds and reptiles retain theirs. (See BMC6 in Mammals II .) In the above context, the origin of life (more order) anywhere in the universe can be thought to be due to the "gentle force" of entropy; that is, the result of increasing disorder elsewhere. See? It's all very simple!! When many smaller spheres are added to a sytem of larger spheres, the "gentle force" of entropy "pushes" the latter into ...
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... "promoters." Promoters typically consist of a few hundred to several thousand bases of DNA. In the work of Yuh et al, the article's authors, these promoters are seen to perform as logic circuits, just like those bits of silicon in your PC. These tiny, DNA-based biological logic circuits determine how genes are interpreted (each gene may be interpreted in several ways), and, in the end, how lifeforms develop from embryo to adult. (Yuh, Chiou-Hwa, et al; "Genomic CisRegulatory Logic: Experimental and Computational Analysis of a Sea Urchin Gene," Science, 279:1896, 1998. Also: Wray, Gregory A.; "Promoter Logic," Science, 279:1871, 1998.) Comment. Figuring out how your PC's hardware evolved is child's play compared to elucidating just how random mutation and natural selection evolved the thousands of different logic circuits switching on and off in your body as you read this. It's all due to entropy! The complexity of biological computers is seen in the logic circuits of a promoter for the gene Endo 16. (From: Science, 279:1871, 1998). Computer-carrying sea urchin. Sharp in more ways than one! From Science Frontiers #117, MAY-JUN 1998 . 1998-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... created by electrical currents flowing high in the ionosphere -- usually higher than 100 kilometers according to current [! ] thinking. Therefore, scientists do not really expect to see terrestrial topography reflected in auroral geometry. Nevertheless, T. Pulkkinen of the Finnish Meterological Institute reported to the May 1998 meeting of the American Geophysical Union that coastlines somehow coax auroral arcs to align with them. In some 200 hours of observation along the Norwegian coast, there were nine clear-cut cases where auroral arcs lined up northsouth directly above the coastline. These alignments lasted 5-10 minutes. L. Frank (of icy-comet notoriety) confirmed this effect with observations from NASA's Polar satellite. Sometimes auroral arcs aligned themselves parallel to the Greenland coast for hundreds of kilometers. Auroral arcs that fanned out east-to-west seemed to hit a barrier when they reached the Greenland coastline; they seemed to be deflected by it, even though the coast was more than 100 kilometers beneath them. (Hecht, Jeff; "Leading Lights," New Scientist, p. 16, May 30, 1998.) From Science Frontiers #119, SEP-OCT 1998 . 1998-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... crossings are several dozen artifacts found in the eastern U.S . that closely resemble some found in France and Iberia. Stanford said, "We don't know yet what that means." Studies of DNA diversity among New World Indian populations find such large differences that at least 30,000 years would have been needed for these differences to develop. (Assuming, of course, a relatively homogeneous group of initial colonists.) Linguist, J. Nichols, from Berkeley, sees a similar diversity in the languages of New World peoples. Some 140 language families -- half the world total -- are found in the Americas. Nichols estimates that it would have taken a minimum of 40,000 years for such diversification. (Again assuming initial homogeneity.) Nichols also pointed out strong similarities in languages all around the Pacific Rim, from New Guinea north to Siberia, around Alaska, and down the west coast of the Americas. The implication is that many of these peoples derived from the same stock. (Lore, David; "Bering Strait May Not Have Been Only Route to Americas," Columbus Dispatch , February 17, 1998. Also: Gibbons, Ann; "Mother Tongues Trace Steps of Earliest Americans," Science, 279:1306, 1998.) Comment. The Bering Strait fetters have been struck. Above we even see hints that ancient seafaring will soon be allowed. Apparently epigraphic heresy, a la B. Fell, remains anathema. Also verboten: Pedra Furada, that 50,000-year-old site in Brazil. ( ...
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... he or she suggests that the earth is bombarded each by 20 house-size, icy minicomets. Well, L. Frank, University of Iowa, did just that in 1986. He was duly pilloried for his trouble. But, at the 1997 spring meeting of the American Geophysical Union, Frank presented new data to back up his previous assertions. The most startling of his new evidence came from a camera aboard a NASA satellite. Time-lapse photos imaged two objects streaking into the atmosphere over Poland and Germany. Frank identified these as clouds of water molecules from disrupted icy minicomets. The clouds had expanded from the house-size minicomets to clouds 3550 miles wide, weighing 20-40 tons. Frank thinks the minicomets come from a cloud of such objects orbiting the sun from earth out to Jupiter and beyond. Why don't they evaporate in the sunlight and near-vacuum of outer space? Perhaps, thought Frank, they are protected by a thin coating of carbon. (Roylance, Frank D.; "Space Snowballs Theory Gains Credence," Baltimore Sun, May 29, 1997. Also: Monastersky, R.; "Is Earth Pelted by Space Snowballs?" Science News, 151:332, 1997. Thanks to all who sent in clippings. There are too many to mention here. Frank's photos also appeared on some national news programs.) Comments. We have already mentioned the minicomets several times in SF. See SF#60/275, for example. If verified, icy minicomets might well be the source of some ...
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... was being slowly throttled by the one surviving astronaut, it tried first to negotiate. Then, as board after board of electronic components were disconnected, it burst into the old song A Bicycle Built for Two . It had learned this tune early in its silicon-based life. Surprisingly, real computers can experience similar Near-Death Experiences (NDEs). S.L . Thaler, a physicist at McDonnell Douglas, was studying neural networks designed to mimic the structure and functions of the human brain. Such neural nets can actually learn as programmers train them. As a evening avocation, Thaler devised a program that randomly severed connections in the neural net, in effect destroying the artificial brain bit by bit. When between 10 and 60% of the connections were destroyed, the net spat out only gibberish. Near 90% destruction, though, strange "whimsical" information was produced that was definitely not gibberish. In contrast, untrained neural networks generated only random numbers as they were "put down"! Evidently, HAL's tuneful demise was not so fanciful after all. (Yam, Philip; "Daisy, Daisy," Scientific American, 268:32, May 1993.) Comment. A.C . Clarke, author of 2001, has stated firmly that HAL's name was not chosen because its letters were one step away from IBM! "Pure coincidence," he has declared. Even though the odds against it are 263 to 1. (Anonymous; Fortean Times, p. 9, no. 98, June 1997.) From ...
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... lake. Where did all these species come from, considering that their little islands were bone dry just a century ago? Goldschmidt writes: "Cichlids that inhabited these exposed rocks would have suffocated, unless they had already left for wetter climes. Yet today, species that do not exist anywhere else can be found near almost every rocky island. From an orthodox point of view, the most plausible explanation for this is quite surprising: many color forms as well as biological species developed over a period of less than two hundred years." This is certainly explosive speciation -- real biological punctuation! But, perhaps as water levels fell, the original cichlids found refuges in surviving pools and then repopulated the lake when the waters rose. But is it reasonable to believe that they all sorted themselves out so perfectly that many species are found nowhere else in the lake? The probability seems high that cichlid speciation has been very rapid -- too rapid, one would think for random mutation and the slow feedback of natural selection to accomplish this daunting task in just a century or two. Might there not be some additional nonsupernatural factor at work? (Goldschmidt, Tijs; Darwin's Dreampond , Cambridge, 1996, p. 125.) From Science Frontiers #110, MAR-APR 1997 . 1997-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... bodies must be nicely streamlined. For males, this means that their testicles must be stored internally. But dolphins are very active animals, and their muscles generate considerable heat -- too much heat for sperm to survive without some sort of special cooling system. (Recall that human males with undescended testicles may become sterile.) Since dolphins are obviously procreating, evolution must have come to the dolphins' rescue. Evolution's engineering solution installs heat exchangers in the dolphins' tails and dorsal fins. Blood heated in the vicinity of the testes is pumped through special veins in the tail and dorsal fin, where it is cooled by seawater and then returned to the dolphins' heat-sensitive innards. Female dolphins have similar heat exchangers to cool their uteri. The same article in Discover points out still another remarkable adaptation conferred on dolphins: They do not have to expend a lot of energy in diving to great depths. Below about 70 meters, the water pressure collapses their lungs so that they sink like rocks! Of course, returning to the surface does require some exertion. (Zimmer, Carl; "The Dolphin Strategy," Discover, 18:72, March 1997.) Comments. One automatically supposes that the dolphin dorsal fin is needed for stabilization when swimming -- like an airplane's rudder. But several cetacea do quite well without dorsal fins; viz., the finless dolphin found in IndoPacific waters. Could dorsal fins actually have evolved for thermal control rather than stabilization? And how do dolphin's breathe if their lungs have collapsed? Their blood ...
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... of Little Rock where, atop a 76-meter (250-foot) hill are perched giant blocks of sandstone. These blocks range up to 7.6 meters (25 feet) in size and weigh many tons. No native rocks in the area match them. The Ice Age glaciers never reached Arkansas, so they can't be glacial erratics. Where did they come from? One clue is the presence of glauconite in the sandstone. Glauconite is common in marine rocks, so suspicion points toward the Gulf of Mexico. Geologist G. Patterson, University of Memphis, thinks that the huge chunks of sandstone came from coastal Louisiana and were carried some 650 kilometers (400 miles) inland by the giant tsunami raised by the asteroid or comet that smashed into the Yucatan to close out the Cretaceous. That, of course, was when the dinosaurs were forced into oblivion. But could the tsunami really have transported such huge rocks 650 kilometers? (Falk, Dan; "Washed Up," New Scientist, p. 26, November 7, 1998.) Comments. Tsunami debris from the end-Cretaceous impact has been found along the Gulf Coast and on some Caribbean islands. In northeastern Mexico, geologists have found a debris layer 3-meters thick that is also of the right age. This layer contains tektites, glass spheres, plant material, and an iridium anomaly. (SF#85) However, these debris deposits can hardly compare to the far-inland Arkansas sandstone chunks. From Science Frontiers #121, JAN-FEB 1999 . 1999- ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 109: Jan-Feb 1997 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Rogue wave smashes the queen elizabeth ii September 11, 1995. North Atlantic. Aboard the Queen Elizabeth II enroute from Cherbourg to New York. During this crossing of the Atlantic, the Queen Elizabeth II had to change course to avoid Hurricane Luis. Despite this precaution, the vessel encountered seas of 18 meters with occasional higher crests. At 0400 the Grand Lounge windows, 22 meters above the water, stove in. But this was only a precursor. "At 0410 the rogue wave was sighted right ahead, looming out of the darkness from 220 , it looked as though the ship was heading straight for the white cliffs of Dover. The wave seemed to take ages to arrive but it was probably less than a minute before it broke with tremendous force over the bow. An incredible shudder went through the ship, followed a few minutes later by two smaller shudders. There seemed to be two waves in succession as the ship fell into the 'hole' behind the first one. The second wave of 28-29 m (period 13 seconds), whilst breaking, crashed over the foredeck, carrying away the forward whistle mast. .. .. . "Captain Warwick admits that sometimes it can be difficult to gauge the height of a wave, but in this case the crest was more or less level with the line of sight for those on the bridge, about 29 m above the surface; additionally, the ...
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... . Kasparov. Incidental to the match itself was the fact that Big Blue sometimes made different moves when confronted with identical chessboards! With these denials of cyberdeterminism in mind, consider the following anecdote. About 40 years ago, D. Herschbach witnessed the first test of an early chess-playing program written by the renowned S. Ulam for the MANIAC I computer. "In this test, the MANIAC I computer played both sides of the board. After a rather bizarre game, Black made a move that checkmated White. Only then did Ulam realize that the program did not say what to do when mated; it just required that a move be made to escape check. While Ulam and his colleagues debated what might happen, the computer whirred on for about ten minutes. Finally it punched out White's move (on paper tape, then the mode). The uncanny solution: a spurious pawn appeared and began to march down the board to become a new queen." (Herschbach, Dudley; "Computer Milestones," Discover, 17:12, October 1996) Comment. If vacuum-tube-equipped MANIAC I was so resourceful and innovative, what might a modern supercomputer "think" up? Remember HAL of 2001: A Space Odyssey and treat your own computer with respect! From Science Frontiers #108, NOV-DEC 1996 . 1996-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... along a local creek when my attention was arrested by a -ton granite boulder in the creek bed. The boulder had 3 holes drilled in its face, about 6 inches apart, and all in a straight line. (See photo.) I had not noticed this boulder before, so I'm fairly confident it was uncovered by the storm's 10-inch deluge of rain. Because the three holes seemed too close together to be blasting holes, I took a closer look at them and was surprised to see that they had "trianguloid" cross sections rather than round ones. By "trianguloid" I mean the cross section was thus: Casts of the holes were made by using modeling clay. The expanded bases of the casts suggest that a shallow pit was pecked out of the granite before drilling began, and the constricted tips show that the first 3/4 inch of the drill bit was of a smaller diameter, perhaps to give it greater penetrating power so that the holes could be started more easily. The smaller "pilot" holes were also trianguloid in cross section." (Anonymous; personal communication, May 27, 1997.) Comment. In SF#69, it was proposed that the triangular holes were made in that shape so that wooden shafts, also of triangular cross section, could be inserted, given a quarter turn, thereby wedging the shaft firmly in place. This idea is behind the speculation that these strange boulders are really ancient "mooring stones." In truth no one really knows how old they are and what ...
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... ." Ref. 1. Meltzer, D.J ., et al; "On a Pleistocene Human Occupation at Pedra Furada, Brazil," Antiquity, 68:695, 1994. Ref. 2. Guidon, N., et al; "Nature and Age of the Deposits in Pedra Furada, Brazil: Reply to Meltzer, Adovasio & Dillehay," Antiquity, 70:408, 1996. Comment. Continuing our SF#105 analogy between geofacts and biological organisms -- both supposedly products of random processes and subsequent selection -- we ask how long it would take for enough random mutations to accumulate, in the proper order (as with the geofact flake scars) to evolve a new species, with the help of natural selection (corresponding to Guidon et al sorting out their flaked stones)? Millions of years? But perhaps that much time was not available. See under BIOLOGY the two items on the rapidly evolving ciclid fishes of Lake Victoria and "intelligent" genomes. Crude stone tools like this are certain signs of human presence -- except when paradigms dictate otherwise! This one is a "bona fide" tool from New Guinea. From Science Frontiers #108, NOV-DEC 1996 . 1996-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... , 27.5 centimeters in diameter, and stack them one above the other. Chill rings to -334 F. Spin rings at 3,000 rpm. You now have an antigravity machine; any object positioned above or below the rings will be weightless! This recipe is based on a claim by Finnish scientist E.E . Podkletnov at the Tampere University of Technology. Podkletnov discovered this amazing effect when researching superconducting materials, However, he used only a single ring, which resulted in a 2% weight reduction. Since antigravity effects are probably additive, it seems reasonable that fifty rings will create a 100% weight reduction. Obviously, more than fifty rings will be required to launch spacecraft from earth! Sure, it's a wild claim, but NASA is checking it out at the University of Alabama in a project headed by N. Li. (Holden, Constance; "NASA's Fling with Antigravity," Science, 274:183, 1996. Also: Port, Otis; "Take That, Isaac Newton," Business Week , p. 42, September 30, 1996. Cr. E. Murphy.) Comment. Facetiousness aside, it is pertinent to add here that physicist P.M .S . Blackett once seriously hypothesized that a magnetic field is generated by a rotating mass, such as the sun. From Science Frontiers #114, NOV-DEC 1997 . 1997-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 114: Nov-Dec 1997 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Standing Stones In North Carolina?A North Carolina reader recently submitted the accompanying photograph of very large, vertically oriented stones that, if found in western Europe, would be quickly assigned to the megalithic culture. Although similar upright stones are known in New England, we have not heard of any in North Carolina before. The stones in question are located in the Boone/Blowing Rock region of western North Carolina near Foscoe, very close to Grandfather Mountain (second highest peak east of the Mississippi). Although they could well be a product of natural forces, they stand out like the proverbial "sore thumb." (Davant, Charles, III; personal communications, July 2 and August 18, 1997.) Row of three, large, erect stones in western North Carolina. From Science Frontiers #114, NOV-DEC 1997 . 1997-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... dates of 116,000 and 176,000 years BP for artifacts found at the Jinmium site in Australia's Northern Territory are being subjected to extreme scrutiny. Thermoluminescence (TL) dating was used in estimating these dates, but TL-dating is in its infancy and full of pitfalls. Geochronologist R. Roberts has looked at the Jinmium data and ventures that the artifacts may be only 10,000 years old. However, he approves of TL dates of 50,000-60,000 years for two rock shelters elsewhere in the Northern Territory. (Gibbons, Ann; "Doubts over Spectacular Dates," Science, 278:219, 1997.) Triangular holes in boulders (SF#113). These puzzling holes may actually be left behind when tourmaline crystals are weathered out of the boulders. (Saul, J.M .; personal communication. November 1, 1997.) Standing stones in North Carolina? SF#114). Grandfather Mountain (5964 feet) is surpassed in height by over a dozen other peaks east of the Mississippi: Mount Washington (6288 feet); Clingmans Dome (6642 feet); etc. Oh well, at least some people are reading this newsletter carefully! (Rice, Charles M.; personal communication, November 1997.) About as anomalous as mounds can get. (SF#114). Watson Break or Watson Brake . We don't know. We have three references for each spelling! Sections through a multi-colored tourmaline crystral . From Science Frontiers #115, JAN-FEB 1998 ...
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... floods that roared down the canyon every few years. To impound some of this valuable water, they initially built a conventional reservoir, but it was soon silted up by the freshets. So, they gradually raised the reservoir walls and constructed a raised canal to the stream bed. It was all very logical. The engineering of the canal is particularly impressive. The channel is 4-8 feet wide, but only 1-2 feet deep. Its steep, 15-foot-high sides are shored up with neatly aligned stones that were carried in from somewhere outside the canyon. (Anonymous; "Mystery Mound Appears to Be an Ancient Reservoir," San Francisco Chronicle, June 6, 1997. Cr. D. Phelps. Also: Anonymous; "Mysterious Mesa Verde Mound Turns Out to Be a Reservoir," Deseret News, June 10-11, 1997. Cr. S. Jones.) Comment. The closely related Hohokam Indians built miles of well-engineered canals where Phoenix now stands. See SF#19 for description. From Science Frontiers #116, MAR-APR 1998 . 1998-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... the other planets, especially Jupiter. Given enough time, these gravitational nuances can result in the ejection of a planet from the solar system -- and may already have done so in the past! Mercury and Mars are the most vulnerable on a billion-year time scale. In the case of Mercury, its orbit will become more and more elliptical according to computer simulations. Eventually a close gravitational encounter with Venus is possible. This could send Mercury careening off into deep space. The probability of this happening is only 1 in a 1000 over 5 billion years, but it is not zero. Mars might likewise be ejected by a passing nudge from earth. However, this encounter could go the other way. Depending upon the celestial dynamics of the encounter, Mars might gravitationally fling earth out into the Galaxy, and our planet would truly become "Spaceship Earth." (Frank, Adam; "Crack in the Clockwork," Astronomy, 26:54, May 1998.) Comment. The computer simulations used in the foregoing study have to assume that we know all the forces acting in the solar system. This may not be the case according to the next item. From Science Frontiers #120, NOV-DEC 1998 . 1998-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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